Ask HN: Negotiating Salary

Don't think that you're worth $40/hr, know that you're worth $40/hr. It sounds like you're unsure, and any good business negotiator is going to pick up on that and use it to their advantage.

The way you know is to get paid that much already, or to have multiple firm offers for that much from other potential employers. If neither of those are true, then you don't know what your value is, and you're negotiating from a point of weakness. If you can't reach that level of confidence, then the next best thing is to find out exactly what the job entails, and learn what the local market pays for that skillset. If you bring extra skills, point them out and use them to bring your price up. If you bring only a subset of those skills, use that to set expectations for future rate increases when you can prove you've added value.

It sounds like you're guessing as to your worth, and negotiating based on the pay you want. Do the research, get competing offers, and know what you're worth. Be prepared to explain to a potential employer how you arrived at the number. It's the only way to get paid fairly.

Companies like Basecamp are the exception that proves the rule. Why do you know of Basecamp’s practices? It’s because they specifically do something different than the norm (and they make a lot of noise about being different).

It’s true that the top performers can get remote jobs just about anywhere. If someone is a top performer with extreme talent, they should absolutely apply to companies like Basecamp. However, Basecamp is a tiny company that receives huge numbers of applications, so its extremely competitive.

I’ve done a lot of remote hiring, and we paid well above local wages for people. What you don’t see if you haven’t done remote hiring before is the absolute flood of applications you get from around the world. A local in-office posting may get in the 100s of applications for a reasonably well known company. Our remote job postings would receive in the 1000s or tens of thousands of applicants. It was unreal to see how competitive it was.

Giving people the idea that any remote worker can walk out and collect US level wages is not realistic. Aspiring to be one of the top performers who can do just that is a good goal for those who are sufficiently motivated, but the reality is that it’s an extremely competitive space and the majority of companies prefer to hire locally once the wages get higher.

> You can tell yourself that it doesn't really matter, but it will eventually.

It's not a hypothetical, I've worked a lot with US companies (I'm in Eastern Europe) and it doesn't have to matter at all.

> We equate pay to seniority, so someone who is paid less is considered more junior even if technically they're not. That leads to getting the sucky work and not being trusted with complex tasks as much.

This has also not been true (I mean generally, it can sometimes happen, but actual cause might not even be the pay discrepancy).

Have worked remote fulltime for many years, have hired locally and remotely and am fully aware of how competitive it is.

All the justifications in the world about how everyone is doing it does not justify paying people what you can get away with vs the value that they provide when asked to.

Generally most people fail the ethics questions. It's like if you picked up a wallet full of cash and kept the cash if nobody's looking. Sure, it's what most people would do. Sure, it's justifiable. Sure, you're still in the wrong to do so.

So yeah, it's the reality that most companies pay this way. It will also continue to be so if we act like that's okay when it isn't. Engineers need to start asking for what they're worth just like folks in sales and marketing do. Instead we compete with each other and companies divide us and conquer. The truth is that most engineers who are great at what they do are far underpaid, even at standard US wages.

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And just to let people know that it's possible, I have throughout my career been able to ask for more than the average engineer in my position because I have a track record that can justify it and I deliver on my promises. I know exactly how much value I provide and that leaves me okay with asking for more money.

I built an entire new platform and resulting new capabilities for my company that enabled us to land 8-figures worth of new ARR last year and a significant multiple of that in pipeline. I have knowledge that most of the rest of my engineering org does not have and is extremely difficult to hire for. There's no way my company just pays me the going salary for my position in my location.

One strategy I've used is to bake a raise into the negotiation. This raise should automatically kick in when the company reaches some measurable goal (MRR, ARR, MAU, whatever...not profit, not VC funding) or a certain amount of time has elapsed. The 'or' is important here as the time component should reflect your worst-case expectation for getting the raise.

There are a couple important things to keep in mind here:

1. You have to trust the other party to some extent. You have to be willing to believe they'll be up-front about the metrics and willing to execute the raise.

2. You have to be willing to work at the lower rate at least until your time component kicks in. Despite any growth projections, do not count on meeting the first criterion before the time component.

Let's use your situation as an example. You'd like to get to $35/hr, but you're willing to work at $30/hr. You've already anchored $40/hr so negotiating a follow-up raise to $35 should be doable.

Let's assume the company has 500k MAU. You might suggest a raise to $38/hr when the company reaches 1MM MAU or after six months of FTE.

If they're not willing to engage in this level of negotiation, that's fine. You've lost very little in terms of leverage and you can still take a more traditional approach.

If they are will to engage, then you have a few more knobs to turn in the negotiation process.

Of course the main risk is they'll renege on the contract, but that's always a risk (I'm assuming this is an at-will contract). You should be prepared for that. But, if they're an ethical employer and you do a good job, I bet they'll be willing to pay a bit more per hour to keep someone who now has a decent amount of domain knowledge and proven themselves to be competent and reliable.